Indymedia Server Seized By UK Police, Again

Indymedia Server Seized By UK Police, Again

"On 22 January 2009, Kent Police seized an Indymedia server hosted by Manchester-based colocation facility UK Grid and run by the alternative
news platform Indymedia UK. The server was taken in relation to comments on an article regarding the convictions in the recent Stop Huntingdon Animal
Cruelty (SHAC) trial. Seven activists were sentenced to a total of 50 years in prison."
The complete story is worth reading; timbrown continues:
"I'm posting this as a concerned UK administrator who hosts a number of sites. The message appears to be clear: the UK establishment does not want
political content, legitimate or otherwise, hosted from these shores. The message has been noted, however free speech must be supported even where it
may not be agreeable."

This concerns me greatly. The confiscation of servers for alleged comments made is a gross violation of free speech and a worrying trend for the
United Kingdom, which is already accused by many of heading toward a 'big brother' society. While I don't agree with the violence used by the
protesters, and while the comments may be extreme, surely the forum for these thoughts must remain available.

Free speech is only free if it continues to apply to speech we oppose.

Normally, it would concern me, but it's part indymedias fault too. They removed the offending post (Personal details), but they have a policy of not
storing IP addresses, which is probably illegal under UK data retention law, therefore the only way for the police to get the offenders details will
be a complex forensic analysis of the server.

oh dear, once again PTB attempt to smash the voice of the people because 'there can be only one' as they say in highlander. its almost comical that
whatever form of protest happens the police and government will go to any length to stop it - We've had MP's call out the police agent provocaturs
in the anti-war march, it's been proven that they lied about the 'violence' at the kingsnorth coal fired power station rally and thus had no reason
to use such heavy handed tactics (the reported police injurys turned out to be bee stings and sun stroke) and a million other things.

The comical thing is most of these people in the protest movement have been shouting about the coming collapse of the overly opulent west for quiet
some time, hehe now it seems we knew more than all the bankers!

If you try to suppress something as powerful as logic or the truth it will explode in your face! meh, shame they'll probably use the 'red lists'
to choose who goes 'over the top' in the war they'll cook up to deal with the credit crisis.

Firstly, just to get this out of the way, while I deplore animal testing, IF the SHAC people did what they're convicted of having done, I have no
time for them, either. Paedophile smears?

No, you make your case and you keep making it until people listen. You don't resort to that kind of vile stuff.

However, the meat of the story is that the Indymedia server was seized simply because people were commenting on the trial.

So now it's illegal to comment on the trial? Ongoing trials are, if memory serves, sub judice, so you're not supposed to comment on them
until they're finished. So if the trial was still going on when the comments were made, the police are technically correct.

However, in a world of finite resources... you'd think they have better things to do than target activists.

But... of course, we know that money rules and the pharmaceutical companies don't want any interference from citizens who might disagree with their
methods.

...Kent Police had emailed Indymedia UK, an independent online news platform, requesting that personal information about Justice Neil Butterfield,
the trial judge, be removed from the Indymedia website and that details of the poster be retained.

Personally, though many judges may be objectionable human beings, publishing their personal details is not a good idea.

Indymedia UK volunteers had already removed the information in line with the projects own privacy policy. Indymedia UK was unable to comply with
Kent Police's request to retain data relating to poster. As an open publishing project, Indymedia UK has set up Apache to not log IP
addresses.

So Indymedia had already done what they could, but their site is set up to protect the anonymity of posters. Hmm. Not too sure about that. It's
altrutistic and everything, but it leaves the site open to abuse - not just from people who think it's ok to smear someone as a paedophile for
conducting animal testing, but also from the security services themselves.

Still, their call, and I guess on balance I applaud them for it.

Furthermore, the Police had been informed that the server in question was a mirror server and therefore not the machine that the comments were
posted to. Nevertheless, Police seized the machine which was handed over by the management of UK Grid. No warrant was shown.

Ok, that makes it an illegal seizure. Of course, the damage is done now and as the following paragraph makes clear, it was basically a fishing
expedition - and whatever the information the police now have will be impossible to their database.

Dr. Lee Salter, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of the West of England, told Indymedia "Journalistic material is protected by
law, and the police should not gather more information than is relevant for their investigation — by seizing this server they are not only getting
information on Indymedia but also on wholly unrelated groups. The police should know that Indymedia does not hold personal information on its
participants, so it is a concern is that the police are collecting random information on participants".

So, to sum up: it's an illegas seizure on a flimsy pretext which nets the police information on unrelated activities.

It's also part of a far wider international network of co-operation between various law enforcement agencies including the FBI:

"According to this Indymedia.org article and AFP report, the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a U.S. company in the UK (covered in this
previous slashdot story) originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland, not the United States. Because Indymedia's hosting company,
Rackspace.com, is a U.S. company, the FBI coordinated the request and accompanied UK Metropolitan Police on the seizure under the auspices of the
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), an international legal treaty, but, according to an FBI spokesman, 'It is not an FBI operation. Through
[MLAT], the subpoena was on behalf of a third country.'"

If they are supposedly monitoring everything with echlelon or whatever the latest catchy program might be, why in the hell do they need to collect the
stupid servers? Seems to me a tad bit fascist to just seize people's property like a thief in the night?

Not everyone gets to see Echelon monitoring results. The police who took the server are unlikely to be the beneficiaries of Echelon intel except on a
strictly need-to-know basis, and therefore would want to get information however they can.

I am so worried about free speech in the UK, it seems to really be dying, it used to be quite slow but now that people just don't care about or see
the importance of free speech the government is going full on at abolishing it. What was once a basic right is now a privilege.

You will begin to see more countries like the Principality of Sealand which provide secure server hosting services. This could mean a tech boom for
small, savvy countries that attempt to cash in.

I didn't watch the Olympics so I'm glad of the information. I did hear about something similar with the Pacific island of Tuvalu (sounds like
something from Shooting Stars!) which got ".tv".

And this was all predicted by the rather wonderful cyberpunk Bruce Sterling. Cue a struggle for privacy between... oh, hell, whoever. I think he may
have coined the word "dataclave" but I might be imaginatively reinterpreting vague memories...

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.